Archives For May 2012

Pots and pans echo through Toronto as ‘casserole’ protest takes hold

The clanging of pots and pans rang through Toronto’s west end Wednesday night as an estimated 2000 people of all ages came out to march in support of Quebec’s student movement and against the province’s Bill 78.

“We were both inspired by what was happening in Quebec and we’d both spent some time there in the last couple of weeks,” said Leila Pourtavaf, one of the event’s organizers. “Coming back to Toronto we wanted to both show solidarity, but also recognize that austerity is not affecting only Quebec.”

Wearing red t-shirts, hats, jackets, accessories and the now famous red squares of the Quebec protest movement, people gathered at Dufferin Grove, a west end park, and began the percussive protest at the appointed 8 p.m.

From the outset, the protest had the makings of a family affair. Claudio, a native Chilean, attended with his wife and four-month old daughter. He noted that pots and pans protests were originally used against the Allende government in Chile in the early 1970s, and were later renewed during resistance to the Pinochet dictatorship.

Founder of Montreal pots and pans protest surprised by success

Hundreds of people stood at the corner of Beaubien and Christophe-Colomb in Montreal banging on their pots and pans Wednesday night to protest Quebec’s Bill 78.

“It’s a casserole frenzy here,” said François-Olivier Chené, the movement’s Montreal founder, speaking over the clamour as the crowd continued to gather near 9 p.m. – well past the 15-minute window suggested for the cookware protests.

The boisterous protests are a reaction to the Quebec government’s highly-contested Bill 78 that puts strict limits on public assembly and imposes stiff fines on protesters, among other measures aimed at putting a lid on over three months of student protests.

Quebec student protests echo movement abroad, as noose tightens

Note: This article originally appeared on OpenFile Montreal, to which this blog post linked for the full text. Since September 2012 OpenFile’s website has been “on hiatus” and the news organization shut down due to financial insolvency. Therefore, the full text of article is now posted below.

By day, then by night, they came out en masse to protest the cost of education. Months of protests only ended in increasingly violent episodes by the police baton, if not by the student’s stone, peppering a political landscape dominated by the student movement.

No, this isn’t Quebec. It’s the streets of Chile and the massive student uprising that has overtaken the country for close to a year now.

“The mobilization has been quite similar, but of course the tension at protests in Quebec has been toned down compared to Chile,” said José del Pozo, a Chilean native and professor of Latin American history at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM). “Social conditions and historical and cultural factors in Chile mean that there is a greater degree of aggression towards the carabineros.”

Still, in both places, marches brightened by costumes, sticky slogans and a festive air have given way to tear gas, broken glass and projectiles, as tens of thousands of students have flooded the streets in the biggest upheaval seen in decades.

The pressure, however, hasn’t knocked Quebec’s three main student groups off balance. In Chile, “they had to build the unity of the movement to be able to go into the streets united and strong against the government,” said Marianne Breton Fontaine, a student at UQÀM who also believes unity has been “decisive” in Quebec because of the sheer number and diversity of student associations.

Breton Fontaine, a member of the Communist Youth League, had followed the Chilean crisis, but got to meet a central player when Camilo Ballesteros, one of the movement’s three original leaders, came to Montreal as part of a cross-country tour.

Ballesteros spoke to a group of over 100 students and members of the public at UQÀM about the origins of the Chilean movement and what they seek. “We demand free, accessible and quality education,” he told Breton Fontaine in an interview.

Ballesteros conceded that free university in Chile is not immediately possible, but that students want broader change in how public money is managed, insisting that Chile’s natural resource revenue must more widely benefit society.

“In Chile tuition fees are triple what they are in Quebec and that’s in absolute terms,” stressed Del Pozo. Part of the problem is the privatization of Chile’s education system brought about by reforms introduced during the Pinochet dictatorship in 1981. Students argue this has made education a lucrative business. And with Chile’s gross domestic product (GDP) per person pegged as the lowest of the OECD countries, high tuition is salt in a large wound.

UQÀM masters student Simon Morin has written about the Chilean conflict in his political science studies. “We can’t understand what’s happening in Quebec without also looking elsewhere,” he said.

Nearly 40 per cent of Quebec students are approaching week 15 on strike, while the Chilean movement marks a year this month with new marches of over 50,000 demonstrators in the capital Santiago.

Like Jean Charest in Quebec, Chile’s President Sebastian Piñera has held a hard line. Concessions made to students this week and in April failed to inspire Chile’s students.

Public support, however, has not been comparable. Chile’s students have consistently held the support of a large majority of Chileans, whereas support in Quebec opinion polls has dropped after hovering near 50 per cent at the outset.

Public disturbances and clashes with police have not helped. Ballesteros has publicly denounced disturbances which seem to favour the student movement. Gabriel Nadeau Dubois, spokesperson for CLASSE, has seemed unwilling to do so.

And where has it all led in Chile? President Piñera’s approval rating hit record lows and stands at 24 per cent as of April with an election coming in 2013 and education the hottest issue among Chileans.

If their latest public plea is any indication, Quebec students want to negotiate. “Students want to participate in defining the solution, the conditions of the return to class and the management of university funds,” said Morin.

“In short, they want to participate in the society in which they hold a stake and the situation is very similar in Chile.”

Photo:Luis Fernando Arellano — Student march May 16, 2012, Santiago, Chile – High school and university students march, demanding free, public, secular and quality education.